"Harry Hole returns in the eleventh installment of the best-selling, electrifying crime fiction series that includes The Bat, The Snowman, and, most recently, Police. In Police--the last novel featuring Jo Nesbø's hard-bitten, maverick Oslo detective--a killer wreaking revenge on the police had Harry Hole fighting for the safety of the people closest to him. Now, in The Thirst, the story continues as Harry is inextricably drawn back into the Oslo...

The internationally acclaimed author of Blood on Snow and the Harry Hole novels now gives us the tightly wound tale of a man running from retribution, a renegade hitman who goes to ground far above the Arctic circle, where the never-setting sun might slowly drive a man insane. He calls himself Ulf—as good a name as any, he thinks—and the only thing he's looking for is a place where he won't be found by Oslo's most notorious drug lord: the Fisherman....

A tale moving from the final months of World War II to the present, and from the Russian front to contemporary South Africa, follows the dual adventures of a freedom-seeking war martyr and an alcoholic police officer who is drawn into a mystery with past origins.